Whatever else you want to say about Catholicism, you have to give it to them for tapping into some very basic human aesthetic sensibilities.Crosses just kind of look cool. And cathedrals, brilliant idea.
One of my favorite memories, to this day, is of the feeling I got walking into an entirely empty cathedral at Columbia University -- whose continued existence seemed to be based on the fact that the liberal, intellectual, highly distracted study body, who no-doubt eschew all things archaic and decadent (except for, of course, their library and well, the entire campus) didn't know it existed.
It felt like I was walking into my very own sanctuary -- a cave where light and darkness, wooden pews and stained glass all created a sublime and personal high.
Reformation protestants, in their no-frills reactionary approach to the 1000-year excesses of the church, must have felt somewhat hamstrung with their simple wooden crosses and spartan aesthetic.
Maybe that's why protestants are always so unnervingly nice, and bring guitars to everything.
As I climbed a hill yesterday, with thousands of islanders making a ritual journey up to the top of Mount Jumullong Manglo for Good Friday, I was struck by a similar feeling. Less catharsis was involved this time, and more wonder at the very photogenic nature of Catholic events.
I got to the mountain, located in the hilly southern region of the island, early -- around 6 a.m. The street below was crowded with cars parked along both sides of the highway, and as the day got brighter more and more people seemed to unload onto the hillside.
The progress up the hill was slow, as the the line of bodies, stretching all the way from the bottom, bumped into one on the way to the summit.
The views from the trail, which provided a relatively short and mild hike my even my off-island standards, were spectacular -- the early morning haze was lifting off the ocean, and the island's jutting coastline could be seen in both directions.
Along the path up, which was marked by homemade crosses made out of rebar and white plastic piping, people would stop and say one of the 14 stations of the cross. It's funny, but I never actually knew that there were stations of the cross, let alone that there were 14 of them before I moved here.
A little alcove carved into the cliff wall provided a particularly romantic setting. I wondered if it was my own secret Catholic sympathies -- no doubt stemming from a simplistic totemistic worship encoded somewhere in my pagan DNA -- that made me want to linger and light candles.
At the top, I was sort of expecting a somber, entirely devout crow. And for the few minutes when the much-anticipated new 11-foot cross arrived on the backs of a group of men, people were quiet.
Most other times, it was like any other widely attended mass event -- kids frolicked, teenagers yelled, parents took a break, people played with cell phones.
Some though, seemed to genuinely be surprised at the top of the hill, looking out at the wild regions of the southern part of the island, that being in nature could be, well, enlightening.
For me, I don't know, I think that at its best -- at its most pure form -- Catholic rituals, like any religion's, exist to tap into a universal human desire for wonder.
But maybe there is something basic about the shape of the cross, hoisted by a bunch of burly men in the sunlight, that makes us all go a little mad.
Still, I would like to think that I would have found wonder, that we all can, just by standing on a hill looking out below.
I suspect that it is easier to find wonder when standing on the hill of a tropical island and looking out below at the pristine Pacific Ocean. Is it a coincidence that the great organized religions of human history have grown up out of civilized landscapes, where people are hemmed in by walls and cities and wealth and have lost much of that contact with nature? And yet the call to religious rituals remains strong even in paradise...
ReplyDelete